Chapter 11 #2
Her head spinning, tiredness weighing her down, Hallie took a seat and watched, unable to stop smiling, as Rosalia finished unpacking the box.
“This is wonderful. Just wonderful. Thank you so much,” Rosalia said, and came across to give Hallie another hug.
“Oh, presents. What did you get?” a familiar voice asked.
Hallie turned her head and realised that the kitchen had double doors that opened onto the house’s living room.
There were other people in the living space, but the person coming towards them, interest in her dark eyes, was Hallie’s cousin and half-sister, Morgana Talbot.
Rather than the dark, tailored suits Morgana usually wore for her job as one of the city’s leading lawyers, she was dressed for a casual evening, wearing a soft, deep blue shirt and jeans, a glass of wine in one hand.
“The best things,” Rosalia said, smiling at Morgana. “Herbs and spices.”
“Good choices for Rosalia,” Morgana approved, stopping to give Hallie a one-armed hug. “I’m so glad to see you. Rosalia said you were travelling and might not make it.”
“Got back a few hours ago,” Hallie said, still feeling the odd sense of displacement, tiredness weighing on her.
She looked past Morgana and smiled as she recognised the other people Rosalia had gathered.
Some of Hallie’s favourite people in the world.
Morgana’s partner, Magnus, who Hallie had met once before.
Their father, Kaherdin. The elderly witch sisters, Kendra and Nelda, along with the much younger and more powerful witch, Aneta.
The final person was one that Hallie had to take a moment to place before she recognised Aaron.
She had last seen him after his first day as a potential skip tracer.
He’d done well, and she’d found him quiet and thoughtful.
She remembered, too, his awestruck expression when they’d met Rosalia, and had to hide a smile, easily able to understand why he was here.
“Is there a reason for the gathering?” Hallie asked as she turned back to Rosalia, then her stomach lurched, dismay gripping her. “I didn’t forget your birthday, did I?”
“No,” Rosalia said, laughing, “although this box will carry me through several birthdays. There’s no special occasion. Kendra and Nelda had been gifted a roast. I said I’d cook it for them and then, well, it sort of grew into this gathering.”
Hallie smiled back, relieved, and felt her heart lighten again.
In the last few months, since Rosalia’s keeper had been killed and her friend’s life had been turned upside down, Hallie had watched her roommate slowly rebuild her life.
She’d rarely seen her so happy, so confident, so relaxed.
Despite the ordinary domestic setting and the plain clothing, Rosalia glowed.
“We were just going to eat,” Rosalia added, eyes back on Hallie. “I’m sorry that Girard can’t make it.”
“Me, too,” Hallie said, “but he really needed some medical attention. He’ll be fine,” she added quickly, as much to reassure herself as the others.
“Do you need a minute or are you ready to eat?” Rosalia asked.
“Just need to wash my hands,” Hallie said, deciding she would put off the strangeness of taking her bag into another new bedroom for a while. She slipped out of the room, heading for the small bathroom that was tucked under the house’s stairs.
When she came back to the kitchen, she found that the table had been extended by adding another one to the end of it.
A series of mismatched chairs had been added, and the surface was covered with serving dishes and silverware and plates and glasses and some small candles that gave a soft glow.
The others were taking their places with a lot of cheerful chatter and soft laughter, and Hallie found she’d been sat between her father and Rosalia, with Aaron on Rosalia’s other side.
She exchanged a hug with her father as she took her place, accepting the glass of water that Rosalia passed to her.
Despite the mismatched group, conversation flowed easily.
Aneta wanted to pick Kaherdin’s brains about some plants she was thinking of adding to her own garden, Kendra and Nelda mercilessly teased Aaron and Magnus about being such fine young men, and how they were so lucky to have found such beautiful women.
Hallie noted, with wry amusement, that neither sister had changed one bit.
Nelda still kept picking pockets and being difficult about handing things back.
Aaron held his own with the witches, treating them with gentle respect, the sort a man might show to his grandmother.
Or the kind of deference that someone raised in low city would know to observe with witches.
Magnus seemed slightly flustered, but kept his balance as Morgana laughed and teased the witches right back.
Hallie had never seen her cousin so relaxed and happy.
The roast was, naturally, cooked to perfection and Hallie finished her second helping thinking she might not be able to eat anything for a week, sitting back as Rosalia, Aneta and Morgana cleared the table, insisting that they didn’t need any help.
With Rosalia no longer between them, Hallie leaned over slightly and caught Aaron’s attention. “How are you enjoying your new job?”
“Very much,” he said, with a rare smile. “It still seems strange to me that I should find it so fascinating to hunt down criminals and return them to custody, but I do. And your aunt is very good to work for. Fair,” he added, as if feeling something else was needed.
“It is interesting work,” Hallie agreed.
“No two days are ever the same. Do you know how the other man is doing? What was his name? Daniel? The one who was injured.” Hallie remembered an irritating young man whose name wouldn’t stick in her mind.
She’d had both he and Aaron with her on the trail of a dangerous skip and Daniel had ended up in hospital.
Hallie would have ended up there, too, if it hadn’t been for her hochlen nature and the magical artefact she carried.
“Daniel, yes,” Aaron said, and smiled again, an unexpected hint of mischief in his face. “He actually came back to work for Miss Talbot, you know.”
“No, seriously? I would have thought the first day would put him off,” Hallie said.
“I definitely think he got a fright, but we’ve worked together a couple of days and he seems a lot more careful now. He’s mostly going out with one of the older tracers.”
Whatever else Hallie might have said was interrupted as Rosalia returned to the table carrying a large round platter bearing an enormous cake, and Hallie realised that she might, just, find room for some more food after all.
Rosalia set the platter on the table to a round of applause from everyone there.
“Oh, fresh berries,” Kendra exclaimed, leaning forward to better inspect the cake. “Wherever did you find those in winter?”
“We have a few greenhouses in the gardens,” Kaherdin said, with a quiet smile. “I like having fresh fruit the year round.”
Hallie had another moment of disorientation, remembering another similar conversation around a very different dining table a long distance from here where the person exclaiming about the berries had turned out to be a vicious killer and the person providing the fresh fruit was a powerful magician.
The sense of displacement faded and was taken over by warmth blooming in her chest. She had spent a long, long time apart from her father and it felt new and strange and yet completely right to be back in his presence again.
She knew that there was no magic involved in what her father could achieve with plants, just many years of learning and quiet skill.
As Rosalia lifted a knife to cut into the cake, loud banging sounded at the house’s front door.
“Are we expecting anyone else?” Hallie asked, looking at her roommate, who was frowning.
“No,” Rosalia said, knife still held in mid-air. She put it down on the platter. “Let me see who it is.”
“I’ll go,” Aaron said, and put a gentle hand on Rosalia’s arm as he moved around her, heading for the front of the house. The quiet, simple gesture told Hallie everything she might want to know about their relationship and how well her former apprentice was treating her roommate.
The table fell silent, everyone listening with open curiosity as Aaron went to the front door and opened it.
“Good evening, ma’am,” he said, a note of puzzlement in his voice. “How can I help?”
“Where is she?”
The angry tones that snapped into the air could only belong to one person. Wilona Talbot. And there was no good reason for her mother to be here at this hour and sounding so furious.
Dread slid across Hallie’s skin. She pulled out her phone, unlocking it and passing it to Rosalia, who was still standing next to her.
“Call Cotovatre. Now,” she told her roommate.
Rosalia started, but she didn’t argue, moving away from the table into the kitchen area as loud footsteps sounded on the floor preceding the arrival in the doorway of Wilona Talbot, flanked by two other men who Hallie vaguely recognised as other members of the Talbot family vine.
Wilona’s eyes scanned across the table, pausing on Morgana’s face with a pinch of her mouth, and then her mouth flattened into a straight, displeased line as she saw Hallie.
“Enough of this playing around. You will come with me and return to the vine immediately.”